Mentalrobics™

You exercise your body to stay physically in shape, so why shouldn't you exercise your brain to stay mentally fit? With these daily exercises you will learn how to flex your mind, improve your creativity and boost your memory. As with any exercise, repetition is necessary for you to see improvement, so pick your favorite exercises from our daily suggestions and repeat them as desired. Try to do some mentalrobics every single day!

Criticism is a comment or judgment made to find fault in an idea. This can be bad for creativity, especially when it comes from a boss or a spouse. When someone produces a new idea, it is likely that they are already a little insecure about it. Criticism often feels like a personal attack. As a result, most people become defensive when criticized and will stubbornly defend their idea even if the criticism has merit.

Criticism has no place in a brainstorm, but once you have selected an idea to pursue, it is a valuable tool. Accepting criticism and using it to improve your ideas are critical to producing quality solutions. Remember that the criticism is not about you; it is about the idea. Try to divorce yourself from your idea and pretend that it just fell out of the sky. This will help you look at it objectively and recognize if the criticism is valid.

Avoid being defensive. Instead, ask lots of clarifying questions and find out what changes the critic would make. Be sure to refer back to the goals so that you aren't solving problems that you do not need to solve. Once you fully understand what the critic is trying to say, you can decide if they have any validity.

A supportive environment that gives good criticism and encourages wild ideas will help people become more comfortable with creativity.

Previously we explained how the Peg Mnemonic System works. The one limitation of this system is that it is difficult to construct lists for numbers greater than 20. Here are two methods that will work for longer lists:

Seasons
This technique will let you memorize up to 40 items. You still use the original 10 items described earlier, but you will supplement this with the seasons in the year (1-10 will be Spring, 11-20 will be Summer, 21-30 will be Fall, and 31-40 will be Winter). You just need to associate the three items (the word, the pegword, and the season) into one visualization. For example, the pegwords for 34 would be a door (four) and a winter scene (31-40). So, if you wanted to memorize "carrots" at this spot, you would make an association with all three things (carrots, door and winter).

Alphabet Pegwords
This system picks concrete nouns that start with each letter of the alphabet. The disadvantage of using these words is that non-sequential retrieval becomes a little more difficult (you may not necessarily know the 17th letter of the alphabet), but it does give you a simple way to remember up to 26 items.